Karen Read Murder Trial Week 4.5: Booze, Babehounds, Butt Dials and a Babysitter With Benefits

You're getting a Week 4.5 update of this case instead a full one at the end of the week for a very simple reason. One that, as a long time employee of the Massachusetts Trial Court, I can explain with some degree of expertise: It's after Memorial Day. And in the nearly endless summer that is Courthouse Life, that means we're only getting one day of testimony this week. And that was yesterday. As we were fond of saying, you know you're working for the state when you hear "Have a nice weekend" on a Wednesday. 

Here are the recaps of the full(ish) five days of work from Week 1, Week 2, Week 3 and Week 4. 

When we left off last Friday, things had gotten really catty in Dedham Court. A group of about 30 Canton- and Canton-adjacent Massholes that included Karen Read and John O'Keefe had gone on a trip to Aruba over New Years. He had hugged the aunt of his godchild, which Read interpreted as more than that. Loud, Boston-accented "Fuck yous" were exchanged in the hotel lobby. Resentments ensued that lingered all the way to the witness stand. And Jennifer McCabe inspired a whole new porn genre:  

I warned you from the outset there would be a lot of sports metaphors as we go along here. And I aim to fulfill that promise. As much as I've tried to remain objective throughout the proceedings, it seems to me that at this point, the prosecution is trying to avoid a series sweep. Or worse, that they're not trying to. I can't shake the feeling we're watching one of those movies/shows where we find out the team is owned by an angry MILF who's trying to tank the season on purpose in order to justify moving the club or get to back at her ex-husband. Think Slap Shot, Major League, or Ted Lasso. That's a measure of how badly things are going for the Commonwealth. Enough to convince some of us neutral observers they have to be doing this on purpose.

I mean, as damaging to the prosecution's case as most of McCabe's testimony was, the big witness that followed was even worse. Believe me, we'll get to him shortly. But before we do, here's a short list of implausible-to-impossible assertions the ADA is asking the jurors to accept as fact in order to convict Karen Read of intentionally backing her car into her boyfriend and leaving him for dead in the early morning hours of January 29th, 2022:

• Every witness that has testified they heard Read say, "I hit him!" on the night in question simply never got around to mentioning it to the Canton Police, State Police, state Grand Jury or federal Grand Jury.
• On the same night McCabe accidentally butt dialed O'Keefe's phone seven times in the span of about 21 minutes, two law enforcement officers also butt dialed each other. One while he was asleep, the other while he was taking his wife for a ride on the F-Train.
• Married couples make hot, butt-dialing love at 2:27am. 
• Those same two cops later replaced their phones in such a way that they lost all their data, including (though not limited to) their numbers, contacts, photos, and apps. On the same day. The day before they would receive court orders to preserve all their phone data. Though one of them did hang onto some texts he exchanged with Read.
• At least four cameras (so far) failed to record at key times. The doorbell camera of neighbor across the street from the accident scene (also on the Canton PD). The one outside the Canton Library is missing two minutes. The one at the sally port at the police station where Read's SUV was taken is missing a half hour. And the Ring camera at O'Keefe's house was deleted.
• Only one witness has claimed to have seen anything where O'Keefe's body was found. And that was described as "a black blob." This despite the fact he allegedly had been there for a good hour as guests were leaving the party. And that 34 Fairview Road is on a modest suburban lot and not some sprawling, Gilded Age Newport mansion.

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But really, the state is asking jurors to accept the credibility of ATF Agent Brian Higgins. And he didn't make it easy for them. 

--Where do we even begin with Higgins? How about the fact that he had to have his own lawyer present in the courtroom to save him from saying anything incriminating, since he's the subject of a federal investigation. I remind you, he's a witness for the prosecution.  After denying he talked to 34 Fairview owner Brian Albert in the late night butt dial exchange, Higgins asserted the 22 seconds the phone data shows wouldn't be enough time to have a conversation anyway. That led to this exchange, which deserved Big Bang Theory-levels of laugh track:

--But possibly being in trouble with the US Justice Department has to feel like a better option than having to read your flirty texts with the defendant into the court record:

Listen, I want to cut Higgins some slack on this. I was married for a decade and a half when the iPhone came out, so I'm not qualified to judge another man's sexting game. For all I know, he's DiCaprio of Norfolk County with this stuff. Regardless, I'd think doing a stretch at the Club Fed they sent Leo to in Wolf of Wall Street would be preferable to having to sit there reading your seduction techniques out loud for the world to hear. And to have to suffer the humiliation of getting compared to Harry and Lloyd by the internet:

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--It's a measure of how bad this is all going for the Commonwealth that they called Higgins to the stand to provide a motive for Read to murder O'Keefe, only to step on the very mouse trap they set. Because if there really was a love triangle at play here, doesn't that give the hypotenuse as much motive as the right angle? And like Ron Swanson, I have a scientifically accurate gauge of human attractiveness. And since Read is at least 3.5 points higher on the scale than Higgins, he'd have more incentive to take out her boyfriend than she would. So this whole line of questioning felt like an own goal by the prosecution to me. 

--But of course the jurors might see that differently. Love is complicated. It's grey area upon grey area upon 50 Shades of Grey area. What is very much black and white is going to great lengths to destroy a $1000 phone at the very moment that phone is about to play a central role in an investigation into the death of a police officer. Including asking another federal LEO to help erase all the messages except the ones that might implicate Read:

Then putting the SIM card into one trash bag and the phone in another and throwing them both out at a military base:

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--For his part, Higgins said his reasoning was that he had gotten a call on his personal phone from someone who was the subject of an investigation he was conducting and didn't want his personal data compromised. Which might make sense if it wasn't so bloody easy to block the caller and then change your number. And if it wasn't such a royal pain in the ass to wipe out all your data and start from scratch. And if he didn’t wait TWO MONTHS after hearing from his suspect to trash the phone. And if he didn't keep testifying with this weirdly passive tense. "The SIM card was placed into a trash bag." "I do not have that phone any more." Did he destroy it? "No. I threw it away."

But more than anything, it's tough to accept since, you know, there was that whole thing about the police officer found lying at death's door by the side of the road outside a party Higgins was at. 

--And we haven't even gotten into Higgins's connections to everybody involved. Even though he works for a federal agency, he was given his own office at Canton Police headquarters and a key card that granted him access to most of the building. And while that sounds extremely suspect to a lot of people and the defense drilled down into his his personal relationship with the Canton officers in general and retired Chief Berkowitz in particular:

… apparently it's not unheard of for a local department to give accommodations to a federal agent. And while it's extremely suspect Higgins would choose the night of O'Keefe's death to head to Canton PD and seem to be running all around the building, there are those who buy his explanation, that he went there to move cars with the storm coming in:

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Personally, I'm not convinced. If you've got an ATF agent so dedicated to the job that he'd drive to a local PD (after at least four Jameson and Gingahs, because he's not a beeeahhh drinkah) at 1:30 in the morning to valet cars for the snow plow, you promote that man. But by his own admission, Higgins has been taken off the streets and put on desk duty while all this plays out. As to whether he gets back on the streets, stays out of prison, and ever finds true love with someone who's not dating an acquaintance and who won't ghost him, only time will tell.

--After Higgins, the ADA called the orphaned niece and nephew that Read and O'Keefe were raising. In a smart move, the court demanded all cameras and phones be turned off to give the kids their privacy. The only thing to be gleaned from their testimony is that most of the time Read was good to them, though once in awhile they'd get yelled at. That both of them referred to her as "the defendant" while avoiding eye contact. And the niece joined the growing list of witnesses who are just now mentioning that she said "I hit him" on January 29th. May God bless those kids who've been through 10 lifetimes worth of grief and loss.

--Astonishing as this is to believe after 18 days of court, we finally heard from the medical personnel who treated O'Keefe at Good Samaritan. The doctor who treated him mentioned scratch marks on his arm, but called them superficial and didn't refer to Chloe the dog. A forensics guy testified with a good degree of credibility that Read's blood alcohol was between 0.135 and 0.292, while admitting that's a pretty wide range:

Which is the first attempt the Commonwealth has made to establish the drunk driving charge against her. But I've sat through literally hundreds of OUI trials and can promise you it's the hardest thing in the courts to prove. Especially two and half years after the fact.

--Then the Commonwealth took a stab at explaining away some of the missing security camera footage. Despite the fact this was also their own witness, it didn't go as they'd hoped:

--Circling back to the subject of snow plows, we heard from members of the Canton DPW who, buy all accounts, were two of the most credible witnesses to take the stand in 18 days of testimony. Presumably because they have no dogs in this fight. They merely came to discuss when the roads were cleared and by whom. 

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--Which brings us to a part of this case Turtleboy solved a long time ago when he tracked down the guy who actually plowed Fairview Road that night. In the most Massachusetts thing ever, he goes by the name Lucky Loughlan. And Lucky saw no body at any point on his trips up and down that road. Which hasn't stopped the State Police investigation from changing its story about who plowed it and when. In fact, the subcontractor they claimed plowed that section of Canton didn't exist until months after O'Keefe's death. And surprise! There's a connection there to the Albert family:

Stay tuned. This might be a break in the action. But there's every reason to think it's only going to get wilder once this starts up again next week